


From Simon and Schuster, With Love

by Aris Merquoni (ArisTGD)



Category: Original Work
Genre: Aggressive recruitment practices, Assassins & Hitmen, Attempted murder that might also be flirting, Caring a lot, Competence Kink - Character is extremely impressed proud&supportive of another character's skills, If I Must Solve A Dozen Geopolitical Problems Just To Have Sex With You Then I Will, Implied Blackmail, Love Confessions - BECAUSE I LOVE YOU- Oops I didn't mean to say that out loud, M/M, Offscreen roaring rampage of revenge, Pedagogy, Pretending Not To Care, Reforming terrible educational practices, Someone needs to teach these children about compound interest, Unapologetically Terrible People Being Unapologetically Terrible
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-04
Updated: 2020-05-04
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:02:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24002530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArisTGD/pseuds/Aris%20Merquoni
Summary: Faculty recruitment at the Academy is always a bit of a chore, and when it involves tracking down the school's missing protege, well, it only pays to send the best.
Relationships: Male Head of Assassin School/Male Former Protege He Blackmailed Into Teaching
Comments: 19
Kudos: 36
Collections: Id Pro Quo 2020





	From Simon and Schuster, With Love

**Author's Note:**

  * For [psychomachia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/psychomachia/gifts).



The Alps were always picturesque in spring. Satine took a moment to admire them as he stopped to stretch his legs, knuckling into a twinge in his left thigh that threatened to turn into a complaint. It was golden hour, the fields of grass below dappled with tiny flowers, and the mountains ahead capped with snow. From the chateau he could see clear across the valley, gently rolling hills scooping down into a basin where snowmelt collected, shimmering like it was made of gemstones.

He took a breath of fresh mountain air and collected himself, then set off across the roofline. Sun-dazzle and a small mirror took care of the automated machine gun emplacements; a rope and grappling hook got him over the tastefully concealed spikes and the electric fencing. Darting like a shadow, he made his way around the perimeter, tracking his target.

He found the man face-down on a deck chair by the pool. The pool itself was a boxy L-shape with an infinity edge on its longest side, facing the sweeping view, and a swim-up bar nearest the house. The man he was looking for was trailing one hand in the water and contemplating the Alpine expanse, nude but for a pair of swimming trunks plastered against still-damp skin. Satine took a moment with his binoculars to be sure of his identification--and, he had to admit, to admire the figure the man cut. The trim wiriness of youth had given way to sculpted muscles kept supple and strong by the extensive gymnasium in the other wing, and laps in this very pool. There were scars tracing their way up the tanned skin--there, on his shoulder, a knurled knot from a piece of barbed wire, and down on his hip, a long sickle-shaped mark that had come from a knife fight. The pale skin wasn't tanned enough to show his freckles, but they would be there peppering those broad shoulders, almost up into the auburn hair cut short at the neck.

Satine sighed in regret, shook his head, and pulled his sniper rifle over his shoulder. He aimed right at the back of the man's skull, and fired.

The bullet hit with a dull thud and the head wobbled, but did nothing else.

For a moment, Satine was impressed at how thoroughly he'd been duped, and then with the lightest of touches he was in the air, sailing head over heels into the pool he'd been admiring a moment ago.

He managed, barely, to turn the disgraceful flip into a dive, but he wouldn't have won any points from the Olympic judges, or from his old teachers. He surfaced and spat, blinking away the tang of chlorination, and squinted up at the roofline.

Anders came down from the roof more sedately, slinging a rope line and rappelling down with a nonchalant air. Like his dummy, he was wearing little more than swimming trunks; though less artfully damp, the irritation in his eyes made the view just as appealing.

"Now, Anders," Satine said, "Is that any way to greet an old friend?"

Anders snorted. "Tell me what you're doing here before I run the pool cleaning cycle."

"Please don't." He spat again. "I don't think I could take any more chlorine."

"Fifty thousand volts enough for you?"

"Please, Anders, I came here to talk." He nodded at the dummy. "Nice work, that. What's it made of, ballistics jelly?"

The younger man sighed. He turned his back for a moment, leaving Satine to tread water and shrug out of the heavier pieces of his kit, and dragged another deck chair poolside. "How exactly," Anders said as he sat down, "Does an isolated Swiss chateau, millions of dollars of security equipment, and returning all attempts to contact me explosively to sender say 'drop in and say hello?'"

"I came here with a job offer."

"I'm retired." Anders waved at the picturesque surroundings. "Or hadn't you noticed?"

"You're thirty-seven," Satine pointed out. "Plenty of years in you yet."

"Yes, and I intend to spend my remaining years drowning in luxury, and I intend those years to last a good long while yet. Not throwing my life away for another paycheck to add to the pile."

Satine shrugged as best he could in the water. "You haven't even heard what the job is, yet. Maybe you'll be interested."

A sharp bark of laughter was Anders' response. "I very much doubt it, _professor."_

"Headmaster," Satine corrected him.

"Congratulations."

"Thank you. We have an opening in the faculty."

For a moment, Anders stared at him, open-mouthed.

Then he laughed. It started bitter, but after a few seconds careened toward genuine hysteria, as he doubled over clutching his sides.

"I'm perfectly serious," Satine said. "If you're not going to invite me inside so we can discuss it, do you mind if I have a drink?"

"Ugh!" Anders flicked his hand at him. "You're impossible. Come on in, I'll open the port."

* * *

As a professor at the Academy, Satine had always had an eye for talent, and beautiful young men, and Anders had been both.

Like most of them, Anders had started out unpolished. Rough and angry, and vicious. The classes at The Academy had tempered his rage, given him a focus, a frame. Taught him how to blend in, chameleonlike. All the skills of an assassin and social climber both. He'd been their prodigy, their pride, their best.

After his first successful assignment he'd shown up in Satine's rooms still dripping blood--his, some, his victim's, mostly--and stripped naked while grinning and blaring Marvin Gaye's cheesiest sexual hits from portable speakers. They'd fucked on every available surface. And again, after his second assignment, and again, and again, and again.

Satine couldn't say which assignment had changed him, or even if it had been just one. All he knew was after Anders had killed fifty-seven people, he'd declared his retirement and vanished.

* * *

The fireplace was a real wood-burning stove, and Satine lounged in a wing-backed chair letting his toes warm up while Anders retrieved the port from his wine cellar.

Anders bounded into view, disappointingly clothed, in trim-cut trousers and a black turtleneck sweater. He'd grown a beard, Satine noted with approval, neatly accentuating his jawline. His eyes glittered as he set down two glasses on the table.

Satine had stripped off his own, soaked sweater and trousers, and was lounging in his undershirt and boxer briefs. He picked up his glass and held it out as Anders uncorked the port.

"This a good year?" he asked idly as the tawny liquid splashed into his glass.

"I assume so," Anders said. "I got it from that Italian arms dealer I took care of. His cellar was spectacular."

"Lovely." He held it up to the light, then took a sip. "Ah, I always did love port."

Anders snorted. "I know. Could never figure out why." He poured his own glass and took it across to the fireplace, and leaned decoratively against the mantel.

"It tastes of summer in Paris."

"Oh shut the fuck up," Anders said. "It tastes of grapes that have gone off. The best it does is get you drunk."

Satine made a show of frowning in disappointment. "I thought I taught you to appreciate wine."

"You taught me how to read a label," Anders said. "And how to determine a vintage by taste, and how to talk about varietals, and how to poison an entire bottle by putting blowfish toxin in the right place in a corkscrew."

"Ahh, yes." Satine smiled. "That was a good one, wasn't it?"

"And now you want me to teach the same to a new generation."

"Ideally."

Anders looked down into his glass, frowning. "I notice you haven't asked me yet."

"Asked you?"

"Why I left."

Satine sipped his port and studied his target. Anders was too good to show much in his body language, but there was a reserve there that was new. A tension. Possibly even a regret.

"I had some theories," he said. "That last job we sent you on. The Belarussian."

"That pig." Anders rolled his eyes. "What about him?"

"That particular mess with the payoffs and the war crimes and the massacre... we work one at a time, in shadows. I thought perhaps a war zone had changed your perspective on our work."

Anders only shrugged, as Satine had expected. "I'm not going to pretend it was pretty, but no. Wait." He gave Satine a strange look. "There was a peace treaty signed the next year. Twelve generals dragged before war crimes tribunals on both sides. Public outrage. Was that you trying to impress me?"

Satine shrugged. "It was worth a shot."

Anders laughed high in his throat. "Well. No. Any other theories?"

"Blackmail, of course, or some other form of extortion," Satine said. "You'd made quite a list of personal enemies. But it turned out of course that none of them had you, or any members of your family, or information about you to hand, and some of them were donors to the school, so..."

"Wait." Anders held up a hand. "You investigated the Baron?"

"I'd already had him under routine investigation," Satine said.

Anders scowled. "I wasn't being blackmailed. Was it so difficult to imagine that I was fed up with it?"

"It seemed wise to eliminate some of the more unpleasant possibilities before moving on to the merely distasteful."

Anders took another sip of his port.

"So, given that you did not seem to require any physical intervention," Satine continued, "I decided to let you explain the next time I saw you." He inclined his head gently.

There was a measured silence as Anders rubbed the bridge of his nose and inhaled. "You really are an insufferable asshole, aren't you," he said.

"I'm often told so."

"It never occurred to you that you might be part of the problem?"

He sighed. "Of course it did."

"So why you? Why now?"

Satine smiled thinly. "I always want the best. You should know that by now."

Anders snorted and took another drink. "And why should I agree?"

"Because in the course of my investigations," Satine said gently, "I found out about that whole unpleasantness in Vienna."

Satine had worked in this business for a long while. He had an excellently honed sense for danger. Every instinct he had began screaming at him that Anders was genuinely considering his death as an option.

He took another sip of port, just in case. It truly was delightful.

"All right," Anders said tightly. "What curriculum did you have in mind?"

"I leave that in your skilled, deadly hands," Satine said. He stood and rested his empty glass on the table. "I'll see you in my office to sort out your schedule and housing, hm?"

* * *

Returning to the Academy was its own set of challenges. Mostly nonlethal ones; the deadlier traps and deterrents were saved to make it difficult for people to leave without proper approval. Getting in was, as was so often the case, easier than getting out. Satine parked his boat at the dock at the schoolside entrance to the underground lake, mounted the stairs out of the cavern, passed classrooms, dormitories, and gymnasiums. He nodded to other faculty he passed; Mercedes, who had been running the martial arts classes since before Satine had come to the Academy; Emile, who taught socializing and persuasion of all types; Patrice, who taught firearms. They nodded back, and if they resented his advancement, none of them showed it.

He opened the door to his office, taking care to thumb the catch and avoid the pressure plate, and stepped inside. Anders was lying on his desk, in nothing but his underwear, reading a well-thumbed paperback copy of _Stranger in a Strange Land._

"I prefer _The Moon is a Harsh Mistress,"_ Satine said mildly, shrugging out of his coat.

"I got it from your desk," Anders pointed out as Satine came around to sit at his chair. "Boring staff meetings? Parent-teacher conferences?"

His phone had been removed and set carefully on the floor without disturbing the headset. He picked it up and dialed Emma, who took care of secretarial business along with teaching classes in disguise and infiltration alongside her brother Emile. "Have you seen our new professor yet?" he asked. "Well, make sure he has a room and a set of outfits ready. And get the classroom schedule for me."

"How thoughtful," Anders said.

"Well, I hardly want you feeling neglected on your first day back." He set the phone back on the floor and rested his arms on his desk, bare inches from the radiant warmth of Anders' skin.

"It's hard to believe it's been fifteen years," Anders mused. "This was old Cavanaugh's office. I think the crosseyed bastard hated me."

"He hated everyone," Satine said affably. "You were no exception."

"I was an exception for a lot of people."

"Top marks from all your teachers."

Anders looked minutely frustrated. "Yes, _also_ that."

"And to think," Satine said, "You didn't have to fuck _all_ of them for your magna cum laude. Only Emile, and that was a matter of professional assessment."

Anders was _fast._ He'd kept up his training in retirement, he'd always been quick, and he was twenty years younger. Satine was pinned to his chair with Anders' hand on his throat, warm press of Anders' thighs holding him down, before he could so much as inhale.

Satine met his eyes calmly. "Oh, forgive me, were you fucking the rest of them? I would have thought Mercedes, at least, would have mentioned it."

"How are you so damnably frigid?" Anders hissed.

"You used to like it when I concentrated on one thing at a time," Satine said. He lowered his hands to grip Anders' thighs and pull him closer, into a more comfortable position straddling his lap. Anders slid forward, making a satisfied grunt when he felt the beginning swell of Satine's cock pressing into him. "Now. Did you have an idea for a curriculum? We're not really covering deployment and recovery, at the moment."

"I thought--" Anders hissed again and rubbed his thumb tenderly along Satine's carotid artery. "I thought that was your specialty."

"I've had to cut back on my teaching responsibilities, sadly," he said. "You can always negotiate if you'd like to teach something else." He let his thumbs slide along the elastic at Anders' waistband.

Anders took a shaky breath. "No. That's fine. Deployment and recovery." His chin lowered as he curled his fingers around the back of Satine's neck.

"And anything else you'd like." Satine patted Anders on the hip. "Now, you'd better go see Emma about that room. Let me know if you need anything."

Anders was still for a breath. Then he put his free hand on Satine's chest and pushed himself upright. "Well. If I want to fuck an ice cube, I can get one from the freezer."

Satine slipped his hands behind Anders' knees and flipped him onto the desk, on his back again. He leaned down and drank in the younger man's startled expression. "Oh, forgive me," he said. "I thought this was all business."

Anders glared daggers at him. "Power has made you a goddamn tease."

"No, it's just given me more toys to play with." He stood back and watched Anders climb back to his feet. "I'm looking forward to seeing your teaching style in action."

"I can only hope you approve," Anders said icily, before striding out the door.

* * *

The students at the Academy were unique. That wasn't just an observation on the nature of the school, but on how individual they tended to be. Each class, those who survived, were as different from each other as they were from the normal people outside. The small group lounged, and perched, and sat nervously, and catnapped, as they waited for their new teacher to appear.

Satine lounged in his chair, watching through the closed-circuit monitor.

Anders strode in, walked to the chalkboard, and started writing. "Good morning, class," he announced, startling the one catnapper awake. "My name is Anders. And today, we'll be starting with an important lesson."

He finished writing 'HOME ECONOMICS' on the board, underlined it, and turned around, crossing his arms over his chest.

The class muttered, tittered. Satine raised an eyebrow.

"Sorry, Mr. Anders," one of the more sardonic of their current pupils, a lanky girl named Priya, asked without raising a hand. "Wasn't this supposed to be a class on sneaking into places?"

"Deployment and recovery," Anders said. "Sure. But what do you do after you've gotten out?" He tilted his head. "How do you cash your paycheck from a job?"

"Uhhh..." Priya was taken aback. "Isn't that just... the bank's job?"

Anders snorted. "All right. Lesson one. How to find a money laundry." He turned around and started writing on the board again.

Satine sat forward in his chair, frowning.

Anders' lesson was like nothing he'd seen taught at the Academy before. Nothing physical, nothing involving weapons or infiltration equipment. His slender hands wielded only the chalk, scratching gently on the green surface as he outlined his points.

At one point he taught them how to balance a checkbook. Satine was stunned.

The next day was much the same. Anders quizzed his confused students on international money markets; valuations of Krugerrands and rubles and dollars. Investments. Land.

Satine narrowed his eyes and watched.

After the third day of explaining the intricacies of compound interest and mail fraud, Priya spoke up again. "What do we need to know all this stuff for? Doesn't the Academy take care of all of this? Isn't that the point?"

He expected Anders to explode, to run down a list of reasons to distrust and flee and turn solo agent or get out of the business entirely. Instead, the man only smiled enigmatically and said, "This is a class about self-sufficiency, isn't it?"

Satine watched the end of the class, then went and looked at his notes about the miserable upset in Vienna again.

* * *

The next time he re-entered the Academy, Anders was waiting for him again. In his bedroom, this time, with a garotte. The slim wire slipped around his neck and caught on his fingers, and he grimaced as he threw himself forward, over, slamming into the bed less on top of Anders than he'd hoped. Anders squirmed around until he was on top, thighs straddling Satine's waist, tugging the garotte tighter.

Satine stabbed his free thumb into the pain point on Anders' collarbone and the wire loosened. With a shove, he got the loop over his head and twisted Anders' wrist. His position was terrible, but he got enough pressure that Anders dropped the garotte.

"Back from a vacation, headmaster?" Anders hissed.

Satine was breathing heavily. He got his knee into soft tissue and twisted his weight onto Anders' back. The other man cried out.

"Vienna is lovely this time of year," he said.

"Fuck!" Anders swore, wriggling out of Satine's grasp.

In moments they were facing each other across the bed. Anders was breathing heavily. Satine took a mental catalogue of his own short breath and bruised ribs.

"Fuck," Anders repeated. "Didn't you have _enough?"_

"I had _more_ than enough," Satine retorted. "I had Ivanovitch's hiding place."

Anders froze.

Satine took a deep breath. "It took me a little while to put it together," he said. "What you were looking for, when you killed all of those poorly organized criminals. Anders, you should have come to me before going to the Russian mob."

That got him a grimace. "I didn't need a sugar daddy as well," he said. "I had a problem, I took care of it."

"Gambling?"

"Investments." Another face. "Bad ones."

"So, gambling, then," Satine said. "Anders..."

"I had it handled," Anders said. "I got out, didn't I? Left a bit of a mess behind, but nobody was looking for me."

Satine shook his head. "In your Swiss fortress."

"Yes!" he snapped. "Yes, and it was fine until you came poking your nose where it wasn't wanted. What the hell, Satine. Why do you keep thinking that I need your help?"

"I hardly think you _need_ anything from me," Satine said, feeling long-held anger begin to surface. "But I had hoped you might welcome some assistance. Dammit, you were my best pupil, I hardly came after you because I thought you were weak!"

"Why, then?" Anders shouted. "What could be so damnably important about me that you stick your nose constantly where it isn't wanted?"

"Perhaps it's because I'm in love with you, dammit!"

There was silence. Anders stared at him in surprise. Satine winced. "... Damn. I..."

"You... aren't serious?" The other man said softly.

Well. In for a ruble, in for a kroner. "I am," he said. "Though this was hardly how I wanted to discuss it with you."

"What..." Anders put his hands over his face. "Why the whole... you blackmailed me."

"I _implied_ I was going to blackmail you," Satine clarified. "The terms were never spelled out."

Anders made a tiny, strangled noise. "Asshole."

"Quite." He gently inched around the end of the bed. "Anders... even if I wasn't personally... attached. You should have said something. That's why we have the Academy, to watch each others' backs."

Anders looked up at him, and his eyes were hollow. "You can't just take these strange, broken children and turn them into killers, and expect everything to go all right."

"I know." He sighed. "Often, it goes terribly. But I'm hoping to change that. It sounds like you're on board."

Anders held out a hand and began tenderly tracing over Satine's skin, fingertips ghosting over nerve clusters, pain points, vulnerable tendons. Very slowly, he moved closer, inside Satine's guard, until he could lay his head on his chest.

"All right," he said. "If I trust you..."

"I hope you do."

"Quiet." Anders poked him in his sore ribs. "If I trust you, will you tell me what you did to Ivanovitch?"

"Of course," he said, surprised. "We did use to tell each other the most interesting stories, didn't we."

"Mmmm," Anders agreed. "Come on. Come to bed. I need to see if I've still earned that magna cum laude."

"I've never had any doubts." Satine leaned down to kiss him, and smiled. "But I think I still have things to teach you."


End file.
